Too bad Livia was born a woman. She’d have left her brothers in the dust. She and Augusta both. But Adele, Diana and Caroline made a trio. I saw early on that they’d just want nice things. And Mary Patton would always need tending, long after Mary and I lay dead and buried. So maybe it was best for all of us that Cassius kept his hungry eye on the bottom line.
And I tried to do what my father taught me. I did. I was determined to build my city on a hill. Got myself so deeply invested in Memphis, it had to prosper or we were sunk. But we faced suddenly steeper odds, once the county seat was denied me.
I can see now that I must have known it from the start. This location on the route west, along with its river connection to the New Orleans market, would make the trading of negroes a booming business, whether I wanted any part of it or not. I do remember hoping to avoid it. But looking back from this distance, I think I must have suspected it all along. Some piece of this trade might prove to be our salvation.
But diversity on this matter raged at the time, even within my own family. William was becoming more open about his abolitionist sentiments, no matter how often I cautioned him against it. Ever since he was a child, William had tried my patience with his pursuit of integrity, honoring the bonds forged with his pickaninny playmates well beyond what was appropriate. I thought it was merely a case of youthful idealism, but this dangerous trait of his wore on into adulthood with the persistence of a lingering cough.
And when Celeste came along, I had hoped he’d leave her down in New Orleans, but if he had to keep her with him in Memphis, I told him repeatedly, he certainly didn’t need to marry her. William kept insisting that Celeste was different, reminding me that she spoke French and could talk politics with any man. Not that those attributes could count for much when she was colored. Maybe they counted in New Orleans but not out here. In fact, in Memphis, they only made matters worse.
I’d heard the rumors about his drinking but I decided they were just that. People find all kinds of things to say about those who try to stand outside the status quo. And once William decided to let his negroes earn their purchase price, so as to remove himself and Celeste from the whole business altogether, the gossip rose to a loud buzzing.
He and Celeste were such likable people, most folks tried to forgive them their mixed marriage. Even their abolitionism. But the whole landscape had already started to change after Denmark Vesey scared all the whites in Charleston half to death, despite his rebellion never getting off the ground. Just the simple fact of his standing up had shifted the balance. I tried to warn William but he remained sure he’d be exempt.
Meanwhile, Cassius worked steadily with Quinn to increase our reliance on negroes. My second son insisted on their profitability and continually denied the endless difficulties associated with them. He maintained that the road to success in this field lay in proper management. He kept telling me it was simple, saying you’ll see.
I tried to listen but I remained astonished by the blindness of youth. It had begun to dawn on me that you cannot do very much for your children after all. What I could do for mine was try to reduce debt and create income, leaving them with as little burden and as much opportunity as possible. After that, it would be up to them.
So when that tall redheaded Scottish woman named Miss Isobel Bryce swept into my foyer talking about her plans for a farm, a kind of utopia which would allow us to rid ourselves of what she called the stain of negro slavery, I knew immediately we were all in trouble, and William and Celeste particularly so.
Her plan was to buy two thousand acres near Memphis in order to set up this utopia. And she had backers. Certainly LaFayette and Jackson. Maybe even Monroe. So many slaveholders had assured her they wanted out badly enough to donate their negroes to her cause, she felt sure she’d have plenty. Plenty of the halt and the lame, I wanted to say. But I bit my tongue as she talked on.
While all those donated negroes worked on her farm to earn their freedom, she would teach classes to ensure they’d be civilized enough to handle their liberation responsibly when it came. Freeing both owned and owner in one fell swoop, she said. As soon as everybody saw how simple it was, she told me that night in all seriousness, replicas of her utopia would spring up everywhere and we’d soon be rid of slavery once and for all.
Miss Bryce was charming that night at dinner but she was relentless. She aimed her gaze at me as brightly as a child while she hammered away with questions whose answers she thought she held in her own uncallused palm.
Did I know that our Founding Fathers, as we now called the men I’d fought under, had been deeply vexed by the problem of slavery? Did I know that many had predicted trouble but that others refused to listen? That Jefferson had even twisted himself into the indefensible and illogical position of blaming the King of England for our dilemma?
Did I know?! I remember a feeling of great hollow emptiness inside. Words surged up like waves but they were useless in the face of such innocence. I saw Mr. Jefferson standing there, holding our snarling wolf by the tail, looking ridiculous.
All I could bring myself to tell Miss Isobel Bryce that night at my dinner table was that slavery was something to be endured for the sake of our brand new and extremely fragile Union, which we’d all agreed upon as the higher priority by far. And yes, I was well aware we’d tried to get ourselves out of it and failed dismally. Hell, I’d tried to get myself out of it and failed. Dismally. Moved nearly a thousand miles west to get away from the messiness of it, only to find it right on my heels.
It tried my nerves to entertain people who knew so little about the world yet remained hell bent on educating others. But I’d long since recognized this subject for the quicksand it was, so I let her talk herself out. It was hard to listen to her plans for her experiment, knowing as well as I did what the outcome would be. I just hoped she wouldn’t drag William and Celeste down with her. All they had done thus far was befriend her but I suspected even that might be too much.
Sure enough, not nearly so many men actually donated their negroes to her as had promised. There’s only so much generosity you can afford. Once the first theft occurred within her compound, she found herself having to give the stripes to two of her pitiful crew and her utopia began to unravel. Soon she and her farm were an utter wreck. She took off for wherever she came from to recover, leaving us to clean up the mess she left behind.
Yet it remains difficult for me to watch the young lose their innocence, no matter how dangerous that innocence might be. Miss Bryce was glorious in her earlier days, reminding me of both William and Lucius. The way their idealism shone while they so earnestly insisted upon all my compromises having been unnecessary, when they had absolutely no idea about any of it.
Somehow, this idealism enlivened me as much as it aggravated me. I found myself curiously hoping against the inevitable destruction of such shining optimism. Watching the excitement and determination on their faces made me want to say aloud, if I cannot have my innocence, then you at least should have yours.
∞
Wash pushes the girl’s mouth from his crotch as Eaton yells at her to get back at him and Richardson flinches but doesn’t look away. She stands up, trapped between Wash about to knock her back and Eaton getting after her. Then all Wash can see is that girl’s mother’s face when he watched them ride in on Eaton’s wagon. Nervous. Wary. Looking around. One hand clutching the side of the wagon and the other on her girl’s shoulder. Always wondering what’s next. What the hell will be the next damn thing. That picture of this girl’s mother, looking around all worn down, rises up in Wash’s mind and freezes his hand in midair.
It is a Sunday in mid-October, crisp and bright outside the closed barn doors. Late rains have brought forth one last blast of color before winter strips the leaves from the trees for good. Richardson has made an exception to his usual rule and decided to let his old friend Eaton put two of his girls with Wash. Here on his own place, in the big barn. Eaton has had no luck since he left Charleston. One
of the two men he bought there turned out to be sick from the start then died before they had even crossed the Tennessee line, taking the second one with him not too long after.
But Richardson’s relieved their stopover coincides with this particular Sunday when most of his people are gone for the afternoon to a prayer service over at Miller’s. He’s surprised by the difficulty Wash seems to be having and he starts to regret his decision. This was a favor and they never work out. Makes him glad he’s been sending Quinn to watch after Wash these days instead of going to see for himself. But Quinn has today off too. He’d disapprove of this exception and he’d be right.
Wash drops his hitting hand as the girl bites off her scream and they all stand there for a minute, hearing each other breathing. Eaton’s horses are stamping and snorting with impatience at being left harnessed after having come at a good clip all morning. They jerk at their bits, wanting to stretch their necks down so they can scratch the sides of their itchy faces along their bony knees. The dust they have kicked up spins in the light.
As slow as an old man, Wash settles on the end of the bench they’ve dragged in and lies back. He clamps his eyes on his loft and lets his arms hang off the sides of the bench to the floor. His hands rest in the dust, palms up and open. The girl moves back over to him, soft and quiet as leaves falling, to kneel between his legs. Something drops even Richardson’s eyes to the floor as Eaton turns on his heel to fetch the second of his girls.
And way up in the hayloft, Lucius pulls back from where he’s been looking down over that high edge, watching Wash with the girl. With his father and his father’s friend and the horses. After meeting Wash’s eye for an instant, he turns away to curl up in the blankets. His stomach heaves, even as his first sexual flush rises through him, but he works to stay quiet. He buries his face in the blankets to smother his crying, smelling horse and smelling Wash.
It is the next Saturday afternoon when everything rises up in Lucius all at once. His family comes home from a neighbor’s wedding, bringing two boy cousins for a visit. It is just as they climb down off their horses and out of the back of the wagon. It is when Emmaline steps forward to take his knapsack. It is when she reaches out to pull him to her, teasing and playing a little like always, but now it is in front of his whole family and his cousins as well, and now, today, it is all wrong.
Hatred rises so fast he can taste it. Like dusty bricks. He hates Emmaline for all she is and all she is not. He hates her for being his mamma and for not being his mamma. For being her baby but not anymore. He hates her for tending him as steady as a low flame and for not being able to save him or herself or Wash.
He slaps her away from him, stomping toward her and yelling at her. He calls her all the nasty dirty names he has heard the older boys use. And he does it in front of as many people, black and white, as he can. Then he stands there, feeling her hands fall slack and away from him and seeing her mouth make a small o as the warmth drains from her face.
Richardson doesn’t see it happen. He’s busy giving Ben careful instructions on how to tend one horse who has come up lame on the trip home. Lucius runs off with his cousins come to spend the night. Without Emmaline to make them change, they head out into the woods in their good clothes, hunting something small to kill. All through the rest of the afternoon, they feel flush with power and togetherness, giddy with belonging.
But Lucius’s running carries him away from the other boys until he finds himself lost. He runs on through the woods yelling. Then he is screaming and crying, then gagging and coughing, cutting both his pants and his legs on thickets of hawthorne and blackberry. Running and running until the tearing in his chest matches the tearing in his heart and he trips and falls to lie there with his face in the dirt. Grabbing fistfuls of fallen leaves and dirt and rocks and pounding the ground with them until the sound of his own rattling breath has died down.
After what feels like a long time, Lucius sits up. Everything is quiet and everything is different now. This same forest that has always felt like his own leafy insides whenever he’d wandered through it with Wash now stands with its face turned away from him.
He realizes one of the sounds he’s hearing is the river so he knows which way to go. He stands up stiff and already sore. As he walks slowly back to the house, even the last few bright golden leaves seem to curl away from him, as if refusing to feather his passage like they used to, and Emmaline’s face keeps appearing before him, her eyes stunned flat and the small o of her mouth refusing to close and smile and act like nothing happened.
That night, just like many more still to come, he has to see her and be tended by her, eat what she fixes him and step into baths she has drawn for him. But she acts so dry and careful, it’s like the somebody he knew has died and left him but still stands there looking at him. He stays cross and rough with her to keep this ghost from coming too close. He hopes she will reach out for him as much as he hopes she won’t. He hits a lot of things after that, especially animals and especially when they are least expecting it.
Wash
Oh, it’s a lure all right. I can see doing how they do. Even that boy.
Makes it too easy, having everything laid out in front of you. Seems like the mean comes up in you whenever weakness lays in front of you. Like you got to stamp it out before it gets on you.
I felt it come up in me sometimes. Certain ones they put me with. All that wriggling and screaming did was make those peckerwoods feel us helpless all the more, so sometimes I did knock her back. Put us all out of her misery.
I knocked CeCe back and I broke her tooth. And I know I put fuel to their fire that see, we’re all just animals, and so it’s fine to do us this way.
But what I did was, I got it over with. It was CeCe trying to hang on to herself that made them want to take it. That’s the part she won’t see. It’s that tight grip that’s sure to get broken. Draws their eye right to it, and then they need to do something about it.
There’s ways to hang on to yourself. You just learn em, that’s all. But CeCe wouldn’t see, and her carrying on was taking up room we didn’t have, so I knocked her back and I got it over with.
Her mamma knew though. She’s old enough and seen enough to know how things go. Nothing works like you think it should. Everything’s backwards if it’s even in that much order.
Her mamma did not turn away from me. Even when she held her girl’s head in her lap, sopping up that trickle of blood and smoothing her forehead, she didn’t turn away from me. She looked up at me where I stood in the doorway leaving, and she just looked at me. Knowing why I did what I did.
She’ll pull her girl through and not by putting it all on me. She’ll tell her it’s more like the weather than one somebody. More like a windstorm passing through, tearing things up and breaking em like sticks. Never meant to. Weather never means to, it just comes through.
That’s what I felt like sometimes. That’s what it all felt like sometimes.
Pallas
I’d sit in my chair, or I’d stand looking out my window, and I’d feel my fingertips running across my lips real light. Thinking about the way Wash does that. Running his fingers over my face like he’s blind. Touching my mouth after I say something, like he’s tracing the words to their source.
And I saw what he did to that girl’s mouth. I fixed up CeCe with my own hands and all the while, she’s cutting her eyes at me since she’s heard I talk to him. And I want to say shut your mouth. I want to say I put him back together just like I’m doing you and don’t think you can even start knowing one thing about me. But I don’t.
And I can see his arm raised and his hand coming down through the air towards her face. I can see it all when I look inside her mouth with that jagged broken off tooth.
I put some poultice in there to mend the inside of her cheek where it keeps cutting open against that tooth. I tell her mamma, let’s put some wax on there for the time being, with her mamma nodding. And then that same night, I sat there by him in that hay
loft window, holding the hand he hit her with.
So I kept an eye out and I stayed ready to roll out of the way, or else I steered clear altogether. He’d never mean it, but I’d leave this world before I’d take another knock and he knew it. But people didn’t mean half the things they did and sometimes, slack was all we had to give each other.
∞
Pallas is one of the few who has decided not to dull her sight or look away. She tells herself things cannot stay like this. Somehow, some way, this world of theirs will shift and slide into some new shape. All of this will tilt and fade and crumble in the long run. The only question is just how long is the long run and can they hang on long enough to make it? And if not them, then theirs.
She makes an odd hard peace with Wash’s situation which she has to make over and over again. When she can manage it, she takes comfort in finding his features and his manner in more and more of the youngsters she sees on her rounds through the neighboring places. She pictures herself working to bring enough of these children of his into this world to make sure some part of Wash will last long enough to stand in the free and clear.
In a strange way, these waves of his children please her. They are like one of those slow but steady rising tides he has told her about in an ocean she has never seen. And in a quiet, central part of herself, in the part that can be about more than just herself and what she wants, she is proud of him. But the two parts of her wrestle over it, with sometimes one winning and sometimes the other.
She has to work to be kind to that woman over on Grange’s place. Molly has made her four girls a family. Insists on calling them Richardsons regardless of how Grange lists them on his ledger. And she waits for Wash in her cabin, refusing to be one of those closed faced women in Grange’s barn. Soon as Molly gets word of Wash coming, she cleans up all her girls so they can stand around him in a neat quiet ring, mesmerized by seeing their own features in his face. She wants to be sure they know he is their father, no matter what people say.
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